Feature
UW’s eye on protected activity
Campus police kept tabs on student groups, records show
After a letter issued by Jane Mae Wong's group called for protests, UW police were posted to spots where campus janitors congregate.
It’s just a few dozen students, teaching assistants and workers who’ve been leading this year’s string of protests against budget cuts, tuition hikes and work overload at the University of Washington. But the organizing they’ve been doing, and the number of people they turned out at one event, has really “freaked out” the administration, one activist says.
That’s why the UW and its police force have been harassing the Student/Worker Coalition and its member groups, says organizer Jane Mee Wong. Last fall, UW police arrested her and another activist after they met with UW custodians and, in April, sent a plainclothes officer to spy on a meeting where students were planning a one-day strike.
The covert operation was well reported after students later spotted the officer in her UW police uniform and alerted the media. At the time, a university spokesperson said the UW police had made an error in judgment that did not reflect the school’s values.
But records obtained through public disclosure from the university reveal that, prior to the flap, administrators used police to respond to demands made by the janitors and, from the top down, the UW Police Department approved of and routinely collected intelligence on the groups – in violation, the ACLU says, of the department’s own operations policy, which restricts intelligence gathering solely to investigations of actual criminal activity.
The records were requested by the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington on behalf of Wong and 14 student groups associated with the Student/Worker Coalition.
Planning or participating in protests is free-speech activity protected by the First Amendment, ACLU spokesperson Doug Honig says. Trying to estimate how many people will show up at an event, he says, doesn’t justify police collecting information on a group’s beliefs. The nearly 500 pages turned over by the university and examined by Real Change, however, show that UW police used the possibility of crime as a premise to conduct surveillance and collect brochures, e-mails and blog entries on the views of groups that they tracked in preparation for protests.
Among the details, which the ACLU will discuss at a news conference planned July 8 with two of the UW activists, the April 8 incident in which Officer Tanesha Van Leuven identified herself only as “Tani” at a Student/Worker Coalition strike-planning meeting was not the only time Van Leuven conducted surveillance on the group.
An e-mail from Van Leuven to Lt. Craig Wilson states she went to a April 1 coalition meeting at Suzallo Cafe and eavesdropped on the group from a nearby table. The e-mail and another she wrote after the April 8 meeting include full reports of what the group was planning for its May 3 campus strike.
Other documents show that, in January, UW officers were placed at clock-in stations and break-time areas of immigrant swing-shift janitors after Wong’s group, Democracy Insurgent, wrote what administrators called a “threatening letter” that demanded action on the janitors’ claims of work speed-up and mistreatment – the threat being protests that the students promised if the issues weren’t resolved.
Police also checked blogs, Facebook and Twitter for information, retaining pages of entries from the Student/Worker Coalition’s No Budget Cuts blog and news articles by the UW Daily and Real Change on the protests and a vote by the school’s teaching assistants to strike. The blogs and articles that police saved also include the comments and in some cases the names of random people who posted responses.
In the lead-up to March 4, a day when college students held protests nationwide against budget cuts, including 600 marchers that the coalition turned out at the UW, university police also consulted colleagues at Evergreen State College in Olympia and the University of California at Berkeley – the scene of a Feb. 26 riot – to ask for and offer the names of activist groups to watch out for.
“The purpose of our intelligence gathering was to prevent any possible criminal activity from occurring,” says UW Police Chief John Vinson in an e-mail. But, “At this time, UWPD is not keeping tabs on any activity and blogs.”
According to the chief, however, it remains a possibility in the future. Though the surveillance at the student meeting was an acknowledged mistake, Vinson says, “UWPD will be updating its policy to ensure any activity of this nature will be vetted through the Office of the Vice President and Vice Provost of Student Life.”
Unless an actual crime is suspected, the ACLU’s Honig says, there should be no surveillance or monitoring of political activity by itself, yet it’s far more widespread than people realize.
In a lawsuit the ACLU has just settled for $418,000, Olympia activist Phil Chinn was driving to an anti-war protest in Grays Harbor in 2007 when a state trooper pulled him over and arrested him after being alerted that he and his passengers were “anarchists” – information, Honig says, based on political surveillance.
To stop the practice, he says, the ACLU advocates passage of state legislation introduced last year – the Washington Enhanced Intelligence Act – that would prohibit law enforcement from collecting or sharing information on political or religious views and activities.
“Officers need to be prepared for large-scale events,” Honig says, “but you don’t need a dossier of information about a group in order to do that. Absent reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, no information other than the size and scope of the event should be collected. The UWPD policy clearly reflects that.”
Wong and the two students who will speak at the ACLU news conference – Salmun Kazerounian and Sarah White – say information contained in the public disclosure records leads them to believe the surveillance has continued.
In the past year, Wong and Democracy Insurgent have been working to help the UW’s swing-shift janitors organize and resist the work speed-up they say has happened in the wake of layoffs. They also fought a July 6 transfer of 39 janitors from the evening shift to days – something the custodians say their union never agreed to and will force many of them to quit the UW or a much-needed second job.
It was after an evening break meeting with custodians at the Health Sciences Center on Sept. 14 that Wong and another Democracy Insurgent member were arrested (“UW police arrest activists for trespassing,” Sept. 16-22, 2009). The two were walking out of the building, which was closed for the night, when a security guard stopped them and asked for identification, Wong says. He knew who they were, she says, but called UW police.
The UW records show that a city prosecutor later dropped the criminal trespass charge for lack of evidence.
Police were also called in after Democracy Insurgent sent custodial manager Andre Vasquez a Dec. 17 letter with a list of demands from the swing-shift janitors. The group claimed that he and two other managers had increased workloads and mistreated the custodians by verbally berating them, ignoring medical conditions and failing to provide respirators. If the issues didn’t stop by Jan. 4, the letter stated, the students would protest.
In an e-mail on Dec. 18, Pat Colaizzo, human resources director for the UW’s Facilities Services, called the communication a “threatening letter” and turned the matter over to David Girts, manager of Safe Campus, a violence prevention program created in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre and a shooting at the UW.
Girts says he’s doesn’t remember Democracy Insurgent making any physical threat of harm, but, to prepare for the protests, he developed a violence prevention plan that involved placing plainclothes UW officers in the areas of the janitors’ punch-clocks and break-time meetings the week of Jan. 4. He says it was for their own protection, as disagreements about the Democracy Insurgent claims had led to minor confrontations among the custodians.
“The purpose of the police presence at the clock-in stations and break times [was] to be a deterrent to violence,” Girts says. “If the cops are standing there, people are less likely to overact or lose control of their emotions.”
Gizachew Kassa, an Ethiopian immigrant who has worked 18 years as a UW custodian, scoffs at the idea of the workers fighting. “We’re not stupid,” he says. The police were there to intimidate the workers and keep them from exercising their freedom of speech, he says, but “we’re not going to stop until they treat us right.”
“I’m not a thief. I’m not a criminal. Sending police when I have a meeting with students or my co-workers, that’s harassment,” Kassa says. And, “if they keep doing that, we’re going to sue the university.”
Comments
I purchased a Real Change newsletter today, like I do every week. I saw Jane Mae Wong on the cover and I remember her from my days at UW. This woman is in no way an advocate for any democratic society. I have been to many speaking engagements at the UW with speakers on all sides of many issues and she and her group do nothing except attempt to silence those who don’t tow her party line. From what I understand, she hates this country as well as our constitution. Her group, “Democracy” Insurgent uses any means necessary to discredit, harass, and intimidate any meaningful dialogue that poses a threat to her and her interests. As someone who advocates for democracy and people that would stand up in the face of oppression, I am convinced that her and her organization gives a hoot about our constitution and our country.
The UW is terrified at the prospect of groups working together instead of against each other in the face of UW taking actions counter to the mission of the university and the contracts they have signed.
“The UW is terrified at the prospect of groups working together instead of against each other in the face of UW taking actions counter to the mission of the university and the contracts they have signed.”
Why would anyone be terrified? I understand the greivences that “Democracy” insurgent enfrachised into their movement due to the work speed-ups, but I am trying to understand the hatred for the United States and Israel that “Democracy” insurgents advocate. This country welcomes all challenges to the status quo and for infractions on rights of people, legal and undocumented.
I spoke at two rallies with Democracy Insurgency over the last few years. DI hijacked the rallies for their own ends at both. They don’t play well with others and claim that everyone who disagrees with them are simply co-opted. Most of the time they’re just plain obnoxious and they have no sense of the teamwork it takes to accomplish change at an institutional and systemic level. They are certainly not the martyrs that this article makes them out to be.
“I spoke at two rallies with Democracy Insurgency over the last few years. DI hijacked the rallies for their own ends at both. They don’t play well with others and claim that everyone who disagrees with them are simply co-opted. Most of the time they’re just plain obnoxious and they have no sense of the teamwork it takes to accomplish change at an institutional and systemic level. They are certainly not the martyrs that this article makes them out to be.”
I definetly sympathize with Jake’s comment. Democracy Insurgent beleives that anyone that deviates from their doctrine has been compromized. DI is known to associate with groups that advocate the forced removal of all “whites” from North America. One such group is the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement-Seattle. Check out their website at http://raims.wordpress.com/ . Again, this group as well as DI hate any affront to their ideology and suspect them as being co-opted.
Does anyone have any examples of these smears against Democracy Insurgent? Can we cite articles, publications, press releases written by DI etc.? As a teacher I’m pretty uncomfortable by folks diagnosing a group’s ideology without any evidence to discuss. As someone who has worked with Wong, I hold a lot of respect for her skills as an organizer and a person committed to furthering social justice. I don’t appreciate this slander. Brandon, are you a cop? You sure like to stir up divisions and make shit up. Such as the crap about DI being buddies with Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement. I’ve never even met anyone in that group.
I have been organizing with DI at UW for about a year and disagree with Jake about DI hijacking, at least since I’ve been around. At the rallies I’ve attended with DI we’ve only spoken when invited to speak or sometimes step up and lead chants when nobody else brings a bullhorn or nobody else is stepping up to give direction at a rally that is starting to fizzle out. Certainly anyone is welcome to speak at a public event.
The two who spoke at the ACLU press conference are not “students” at UW. The lady who was arrested for trespassing at the medical center is not a student or UW affiliated and did not obtain a permit to be in the building after hours. Don’t cry fowl when you are not a student or are sticking your behind in others faces.
To AW, no I am not a cop. No I am not making shit up. Here is a link to the website were Democracy Insugent held a forum with RAIM members: http://raims.wordpress.com/page/2/
Scroll to the bottom and you will see the following:
Join the convergence in Vancouver, Feb. 10-15, 2010!
* Kudos to Common Action and Democracy Insurgent for hosting this outstanding event!
** Terminology Clarification: First Nations = (Indigenous or Native Peoples/Oppressed Nations/Friends); First World = (White Settler Crackertopian Scum/Oppressor Nation/Enemies) Crackers are good with tomato ketchup on Thankkksgiving…
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